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Category EVA Foam Tips and Tricks

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What is Shellac? Shellac is a fast drying transparent finish that is mostly used to seal wood, but can also be used on other surfaces. It can be used as an undercoat or as a top coat. Shellac is a natural substance (made from bugs or something) and has been around forever.

Furthering my quest to discover the cheapest way to pre-treat EVA foam to get the best results I ran a little comparison between Elmer’s Tacky Glue and Plasti-dip.

These scraps of foam are all painted with 1 part Tacky Glue to 1 part water and then painted with one coat of metallic spray paint. The numbers indicate how many coats of the glue that each piece got. The gouged up foam was just so I could see what impact the tacky glue would have on imperfections. Continue reading →

There is a lot of talk on the internet about different ways to seal EVA foam. I’ve always used plasti-dip, a product readily available in the USA in spray form or “dip” form. A whole suit of armor could easily use 5+ cans, and at $7.00 or so a can, that can add up. Honestly, because of cost, I’ve never put on as many coats of the stuff as I needed to to get a really clean, shiny surface.

I’ve seen it recommended on the internet that you can seal foam using a mysterious substance called PVA glue. What is PVA (polyvinyl acetate) glue? Well, I haven’t really determined that. Some people say it’s woodglue. Other’s say it is white glue. Still others say that it is a specially glue that you can buy to bind books. Honestly, I’ve googled and googled and haven’t come up with a definitive answer. So I went to the craft store, and then to the home improvement store to buy some of this PVA glue, but not one bottle of glue said PVA anywhere on it.

In the past I’ve tried sealing foam with both woodglue, and modge-podge, and both produced cracked undesirable results. But maybe I was just doing it wrong? Some people recommend diluting the glue, 1:1, 1:3, 1:10 – I’ve seen all variations. And then recently, I saw someone recommend using a combination: woodglue topped with plasti-dip.

So before launching into another project that would inevitably cost me $50 in plasti-dip, I decided to run my own experiment.